To Immolate
by Quentin B. Caulfield
Summary: What had started out as a selfless but crazy desire to ensure his happiness had cruelly turned into a parasitic existence. InuKag, AU.


Disclaimer: I do not own _Inuyasha._

"_Please don't mind my scribbling, Mrs. Higurashi, they are simply notes to myself. What we discuss here stays here – no one else shall know. So please, tell me what's on you mind."_

_Breathe._

_There. Now… talk._

They say that the quintessential mark of true love, of truly loving a person, is sacrifice. That you must cry, you must hurt, and you must suffer to prove that your love is the "real thing." And to that end, in an ironic but sick twist of fate, you are willing to give up that which you cherish most: in the quest to achieve happiness for the one you love, you foolishly assume that "they could never be happy with me" must mean that "they will find the utmost happiness with _such and such_." And after an indefinite amount of scheming, groaning, and complaining when your "one true love" finds happiness in someone else, can you truly be angry with them for being insensitive? Can you honestly blame him for not reading between the lines and realizing that you have loved him all along?

Can you sincerely blame her for taking him away from you?

_No._ You cannot.

Because what you really regret is not that she is now hanging contently on the arm of your true love. And you aren't really crying because he's just proposed to her instead of you.

What is truly making you suffer, making you hurt, making you _cry_ is that you never had the courage to lay your cards on the table, that you could never could get the words "I love you" past the lump in your throat.

My name is Hirigushi Kagome.

And that is my story in a nutshell.

It's a typical story, perhaps even a bit cliché. It almost sickens me to think that my story is the stuff that romance novels are made of. And every time I look back, every time I try to fabricate how it could be different, I only wind up making my soap-opera life just a bit more ridiculous, just a bit more like those romance series that line my friends' walls.

But the sad part is that no matter how alike I am to those fabricated female protagonists my story is true. The pain that I endured, the tears that were shed. Those all were real, real events in my life that have shaped the person I am today.

I fell in love with my best friend at the tender age of sixteen – when I was still delusional enough to hope that happy endings did exist.

Or perhaps it wasn't quite love yet, perhaps it was just a deep affection that consumed my thoughts before I went to bed, that made me jittery in his very presence. Perhaps it all originated in those wistful daydreams of a happy family and a loving husband. Perhaps I was only looking for companionship in the beginning, only looking at the men in my life and choosing which one I could spend the rest of my life with.

But what it later manifested itself into was deeper than affection. I _likeliked_ him.

And then three months later, he asked me to help him "snag" Fukatami Kikyo.

The scheming, the planning, the long nights that we spent in my room debating the best course of action – they were tough. Recommending your secret love on the best way to snag another girl was the hardest thing (emotionally) I had to do up until that point in my life.

_Heh. _But I did it.

I sat with him, on my distinctly un-soft carpet until I couldn't feel my butt anymore. I stayed up until ungodly hours planning how we would get her to notice him, get her to become attracted to him… get her to love him.

And so I was there when she surprised us both and asked him to our Junior Prom. I had front row seats when she hesitantly kissed him on the cheek on the night of the event and his eyes lit up like headlights bursting around a darkened corner.

I was there when he fretted over where he should take her on their first date, whether he should get her flowers or not, whether it would be too assuming to pick her up at her house early or right on time. I was the one who listened as he poured out his heart over the phone, told me about all the cute and funny and endearing things she did that just made him love her all the more.

I knew dates of all their "milestones." Their first kiss, first date, first _this_, first _that_, I knew them like they were the dates of my parents' birthdays. I was the one who even reminded him of their first year anniversary! I was the one who helped him pick out the suit-tie-vest combination that had her blushing at the sight of him. I was the one who scoured the streets with him, searching for the perfect restaurant to take her to on their one-year anniversary. The right restaurant, the right food, and the right atmosphere… it was maddening. And in my one moment of weakness, when he looked so despondent and depressed, I broke: I offered to cook for them, I offered to create that perfect, romantic night that he yearned for.

And so of course I was there when he proposed to her. I had helped him pick out the ring, make the arrangements at their favorite restaurant (which after all our scouring, turned out to be the local burger joint), and had even helped with his proposal speech.

Through all of this I smiled, laughed, and cheered appropriately. I graciously accepted when he asked that I plan their wedding. I tastefully shed a tear when the vows were exchanged, and gave the most encouraging toast at the reception afterward. I made sure that wedding went off without a hitch, and ruefully smiled when the bouquet landed far away from my greedy hands.

But while I thought that I was doing this all for them, I found I couldn't ignore that my intentions were not as pure as I'd hoped. It became an obsession. They _had to be happy_. Because if they were happy, if their life formed _conformed?_ to the images of a happy family that tormented me at night, then I could live with my decision. I could live with my sacrifice.

Did I like tormenting myself like this? Did I find some sick, sardonic pleasure in seeing my dream carried out by another? No. At least I didn't think so at first.

But then, when I held their first child in my arms, cradled it as if it were my own… I realized that I was living through them.

It took me a long time to fully understand what that meant, what "living through them" really bespoke about my situation in life. But when I found myself as their make-shift nanny, when my co-workers all assumed that it was my _own_ family that took up all of my time, I began to realize that I truly was using their family, their lives as a way to satisfy the gaping holes in my own life.

I was employed, and I was successful. But my outside life consisted solely of their family – I was _always _there for them, whenever they needed me.

Why?

When had it become such an all-encompassing affair?

It scared me, to be quite frank. It scared me shitless that I could have lost sight of myself so completely in my quest for his happiness. And so I hastily withdrew. I tried to fill my free time with hobbies that I had long forgotten, with men who were only mildly interesting. I tried to spend less and less time there, hoping that I could recover the **me** that I had seemingly forgotten.

And so I wasn't there when Kikyo left.

For once I was truly shocked when the broken voice of my best friend stuttered out those distasteful words. "S-she left me."

As I found out later, she hadn't just packed her bags and disappeared as I had first feared – it was legal divorce, with all the months of counseling and arguing that preceded it; but she had left him emotionally way before that, it seemed. I was taken aback that I had honestly become so distant, so disconnected from their family that I had not noticed the signs, not heard the shouting and arguing, not felt a sliver of worry for the state of affairs.

And for once, I hadn't been there. I hadn't seen it coming. I didn't make everything perfect.

Before I could even stop myself, before I could even remember that I had spent the last year trying to detach myself from him, I was standing in front of his door and yelling at him to let me in.

_Let me back into your life. Let me be there to hold you again. Let me be the one to wipe away your tears._

Just like always. Just like it should be.

Just like I wish it could have stayed.

… I was caught again. But this time it was much harder – Kikyo was gone. His Wife, that impenetrable wall, that harsh slap of reality that had always stood right in from of my eyes – she was removed. And while it appeared as if nothing had changed, as if I had simply fallen back into my original role as his confidant, as his best friend… something had changed.

I was different. I was more aware and yet I had less (in fact, almost nothing) standing in my way.

I began to spend every night there, looking over the children (a baby girl had entered the family without so much as a notice or letter to me), looking over him. It was a routine that was not unusual, but went against everything I had built over the last year. Sure, I wasn't totally ignoring myself as I did before – my hobbies didn't die, and I still entertained my fleeting love interests now and again. But it was as if I had simply moved my life into their house – I took care of his children as if they were my own. I cooked, cleaned, and cared for him as if he were my own.

But he wasn't. That was the cold truth that I had to recognize every once in a while so that I didn't fall too deep into loving my fabricated family… my fantasy husband.

And so there were times that I cried.

I cried for myself, for letting myself become so intertwined with this man that I could neither escape him nor deny him. I cried tears for the past "Kagome" that I had forced to endure such crippling sacrifice with barely a sound. And then I cried for allowing myself to make such decisions – what had started out as a selfless but crazy desire to ensure his happiness had cruelly turned into a parasitic existence. Paradoxically, I had used their family to fulfill my dreams, while simultaneously rubbing my unrewarding existence in my face. I cried because now their family was in shambles and I was desperately attempting to trick myself into believing that my fantasy family had suddenly become my own.

The regret was so heavy, and my sobs so broken. The pain that continuously poured from my soul was the culmination of years of rejecting my true desires and my secret dreams.

So that's the state of affairs – nothing's really changed so far.

Well except that he said that I really should see a psychologist.

And so now I sit here in front of you Doctor, spilling my story to you and allowing you to fill your little notebook with your psychological analysis of my –– it's probably unflattering isn't it?

…I'm crying aren't I? I can feel them.

_Sigh. _

…You're probably going to tell him, aren't you?

No matter, it's probably better this way.

Maybe now, I can move past the past and embrace my future.

_Ugh_. How cliché. Please erase that from you notes – I wouldn't want it to get back to Inuyasha that I've lost my mind or anything.

**END**.

Hm, I really can't say what inspired this piece - I intended for this to finish in a way that ended with a happy InuKag relationship, but I just couldn't find a feasible ending that had their happy marriage in it.

My writing was quite different than usual (for those of you who know me from the Naruto universe) – I wanted capture Kagome's voice in her words rather than my voice (a narrator's voice) speaking to you.

**A few notes and unanswered questions:**

Do they end up together in the end? That's honestly for you to decide – I've left it vague enough so that it could go either way, but nothing is really clear and straightforward. I am probably the biggest fan of their relationship, but I really wanted to write something that answered a nagging "what-if":

What if Kagome's self-sacrificing nature was taken to the extreme? Barring anything too drastic, what could a slow but constant mindset of "sacrifice" do to a person?

Would it drive them crazy? Or would everything work out in the end, with no scars?

I don't know, and that's probably why the ending is so ambiguous – it's not clear whether she is crazy, she's on the verge, or whether everything worked out fine.

So I hope you enjoyed this.

_Thank you for reading my work. Any comments, critiques, or general feedback is greatly appreciated. _


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